I HAVE sent the Prime Minister a petition opposing the bombing of Yugoslavia, signed by 140 people in Accrington town centre.

The brutal actions carried out by the regime in Yugoslavia are unacceptable and have been rightly condemned. Those responsible should have to answer for crimes against humanity. But the NATO bombing is crude, indiscriminate and ill thought out.

It encourages the dangerous belief that bombing campaigns can somehow end civil conflicts. This has plainly not happened and it has worsened the situation in Kosovo. All the other non-violent options for dealing with the situation had not been exhausted.

It is an indictment of the governments supporting NATO action that, at the end of a century in which there have been more wars than ever before, they did not regard military action as a last resort. The situation has now been reached where the NATO bombing is being kept up day after day as a kind of indiscriminate retribution, with no indication of when it will end or what will cause it to.

The military action itself has already caused death and injury among innocent civilians. More will be killed and injured the longer it continues. It is not possible to take military action against the centre of a major city and against road bridges without civilian casualties.

Nations which are not part of NATO will rightly question where it is going to bomb next. The United Nations Association in Britain has said: "We believe that the NATO action is illegal, it has not been authorised by the UN Security Council and therefore it should stop."

I hope that the Government will end its support for the military action against Yugoslavia and call for a negotiated end to the dispute.

PETER BILLINGTON, East Crescent, Accrington.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.